Saturday, 24 October 2015

Although I had bumbled my own way to the conclusions reached in the previous article about the context for Æthelberht's Laws, Patrick Wormald had already reached them (or ones very similar) 20 years ago. See The Making of English Law round about p.100. This will go into a footnote, as will an acknowledgement to Dr Levi Roach for putting me onto it, though I really should have known to look there to start off with if I was any good... What I will make of this point, however, is likely to be rather different from what Wormald did.

One of the most
important elements of these changes is the seemingly general demise of
prestigious secular ‘Roman’ identities.The ‘Roman’ dux Chramnelen
listed by Fredegar points us at one potential exception, to which we shall
return.This must be one of the more
dramatic consequences of Justinian’s wars and accompanying ideology.As has been noted, in Lex Salica the romani
represent a parallel free population to that of the franci within which three different strata can be noted: the tributarii, (tax-payers), the possessores (land-owners) and the
members of the convivia regis (‘the
kings dining companions’).These strata
have a lower wergild than, but otherwise seem broadly equivalent to, their
Frankish counterparts: the francus
(for the possessores) and the antrustio or member of the trustis regis (the royal bodyguard, for
the members of the convivia regis).[1]The names of the different strata make clear
the functional division between the Franks and Romans, with the former
occupying a military role and the latter paying taxes and handling the civil
administration.Outside a few specific
cases relating to offences between people of different ethnic identities,
however, the general term ingenuus
seems to encompass freemen of any ethnicity.[2]More than that, as in a number of other
immediately post-imperial law-codes, ethnic identity seems primarily to apply
to mature adult males.[3]This appears to imply that a fully ethnic
legal identity was achieved, presumably when a male married and established a
household, with legal dependents.

The picture
given by Ripuarian Law, as described
earlier, is quite different.In the
territory within which the law applied, romani
were half-free and required a Ripuarian to speak for them at law.The Ripuarians, moreover, include men, women
and children.Ethnicity now appears to
be something ascribed at birth.The romani who can be tried by their own
law, mentioned above, are those – presumably aristocrats – from other areas
(mainly, one assumes, Aquitaine or Provence).There were many reasons why one might adopt a Frankish identity in
sixth-century northern Gaul: legal privilege, exemption from some forms of
taxation, the greater prestige of military service (enabling one to attend the
gatherings of the army, the most significant political assembly of the realm),
and so on.It is therefore not difficult
to envisage a gradual drift towards Frankish identity over the period.The shift seems to be rather more significant
than that model would allow, however, accelerating dramatically in the late
sixth century.There had, after all,
been cultural and other bases of Roman identity that could be deployed to
counter the de facto political and
military power of the Franks.Mid-sixth-century
Merovingian kings had continued to bestow patronage upon Roman aristocrats and
the Church had remained an area wherein some form of Roman identity was important.Most sixth-century churchmen, even in the
north, have Roman names.[4]It seems most plausible to see the
ideological shifts associated with Justinian’s campaigns of ‘reconquest’ as
finally cutting away the cultural or social benefits of Roman identity in much
of the West.As a result, as we have
seen, ‘Romans’ in north-east Gaul effectively ceased to be a part of the free
population. Another indication of the general collapse of a Roman identity can
be seen in name-giving practices.In the
sixth century most churchmen had, or took, Roman names.The bishop list of Metz is not untypical;
after the accession of Agiulf sometime around 590-600 only three other bishops
had Roman names during the Merovingian period.Fredegar’s Roman dux
Chramnelen had taken a Frankish name although the adoption of non-Roman names
by Gallo-Romans entering the service of the Merovingian kings had begun much
earlier.[5]

What, however,
of those ‘Romans’ in parts of the Frankish realm that had never experienced
significant settlement by people claiming a non-Roman identity, such as
Aquitaine?This area had always been a
somewhat unusual part of the regnum.The land-owners in the region, it would seem,
were expected to perform military service as well as pay taxes from their
estates.[6]There was clearly some social cachet to their
identity which could be played off against ‘Franks’ administering the region
for the kings.[7]Gregory was not above giving a certain
pejorative, ‘barbarian’ sense to the label ‘Frank’ on occasion.It is interesting, then, that Germanic names seem
to have become almost as ubiquitous here as north of the Loire by the seventh
century.It is interesting too that in
the Life of Saint Eligius the epithet
romanus thrown at the saint by
northern countryfolk is clearly derogatory - as indeed it would have been in
the north by that date, if we can judge from Lex Ribvaria.In this
context then perhaps it is significant that was from the seventh century that a
‘Gascon’ (Basque) identity began to be important in southern Gaul, associated
with a military élite.Romanness was no
longer adequate.

The clause of
Ripuarian Law alluded to earlier, about the personality of the law, seems to be
indicative of a general trend from around 600.The prologues to the Pactus of
Alamannic Law and the Bavarian Law refer to the creation of laws for these
peoples in the early seventh century.The Alamannic pactus claims to
have been issued by a king Chlothar, generally seen as Chlothar II, whereas the
preface to Lex Baiwariorum tells of
how king Dagobert perfected earlier laws drawn up by earlier kings (Theuderic,
Childebert and Chlothar are named[8])
and gave them to each people.[9]Bavarian Law quotes the words of Isidore of
Seville describing the people who gave the laws to the different peoples of
history, down to the Theodosian Code, before saying that thereafter ‘each
people chose a law for itself from its customs’ and quoting Isidore again on
the distinctions between lex, mos, and consuetudo.It seems very
likely, then, that the association of peoples with their own law was a
development of the period around 600.

In this
connection it is interesting to reconsider some clauses of Chlothar II’s Edict of Paris, issued in October
614.Clause 12 of the Edict requires that no iudex be appointed from outside the
region in which he was to exercise his functions.The judge would have to have property in the
region from which he could compensate claimants in the case of any wrong-doing.Seeing such an enactment in terms of a
concern for (in modern terms) ‘accountable’ local government seems reasonable
enough.[10]The clause makes yet more sense, however, in
a context where the different regions of the realm had their own law.If, for example, a Burgundian was sent into
Austrasia as a judge then, by the very terms of Ripuarian Law, he would be
entitled to be tried by Burgundian Law rather than the law he was supposed to
be administering and this would indeed cause problems in gaining restitution
for any offences, especially if he was required to recompense any plaintiffs
with property that lay in a different law’s area of jurisdiction.

The Pactus Legis Alemannorum, which claims
to have been issued by King Chlothar (presumably Chlothar II, as noted), is an
interesting text.Unlike the near-contemporary
Lex Ribvaria it makes no reference to
internal ethnic divisions.The term Alamannus itself appears but rarely; the
concern of the law is much more with stratification within the free population.Of course, the bulk of the area within which
the Pactus applied lay outside the late
Empire’s boundaries, so the absence of romani
is a problem that probably does not arise.We can at least say that not trace remained in the law of the Roman
inhabitants of the agri decumates. Whether the Pactus applied in Alsace (formerly a part of Germania Prima) of is moot: perhaps unlikely but not
impossible.The promulgation of the Pactus has been linked by some scholars
to the presence of the king at Marlenheim near Strasbourg and the relationship
between Alsace and the Austrasian court was troubled in the first decades of
the seventh century but it is difficult to draw firm conclusions.The implication nevertheless is that the seventh-century
population of Alamannia shared a single ethnicity.

With this in
mind, then, it might not be surprising either that the first Anglo-Saxon
law-code, that of Æthelberht of Kent, also belongs to the reign of Chlothar II.The acquisition of a bishop with the pallium, direct from Rome may have been
a means of cementing Æthelberht’s new dominance in English politics and an
independence from the powerful rulers across the Channel.The issuing of a set of laws for his people
might be another element of such a strategy, or it could be seen in the context
of broader developments within the area of Frankish hegemony.All the ‘peoples’ of the Frankish regnum should have their own law.However, ethnic labels of any sort are
strikingly absent from Æthelberht’s code (as they are from all of the
seventh-century Kentish codes), even in the description of the kingdom.[11]This fact is difficult to interpret.Given Bede’s famous statement about the
origins of the various kingdoms of the English, with Kent being founded by Jutes,
the absence of any reference to Jutes in Kentish documents is immediately
striking.Was ‘Jute’ an outside
appellation?It has been suggested
plausibly enough that the Eucii who
appear alongside the Saxones in
Theudebert I’s letter to Justinian could be the ‘Jutes’ of Kent.[12]Was it rather that the ethnonym disappeared
from use in southern England by the early seventh century?By the time our records appear the Kentish
kingdom and its inhabitants seem exclusively to be associated with the Roman civitas of the Cantii.If so, it is
intriguing to speculate on the sort of process that might have brought this
about.Perhaps, for example, only one civitas of a once-larger sixth-century
‘Jutish’ realm remained?This might
explain why the other ‘Jutish’ region in Bede’s view was the Isle of Wight and
the coastline opposite, a quite separate region.Ethnic labels of a higher, ‘gentile’[13]
level might have been lost in the process.Either way, in Æthelberht’s Code the distinctions among the free
population are entirely based upon status within a legal hierarchy that makes
no reference to ethnic differences.In
this – and in other aspects – the law interestingly resembles its close
contemporary, the Pactus Legis
Alemannorum.Unlike the area within
which the pactus applied, however,
the absence of a Roman population cannot be so easily bracketed. Were we to
assume that, instead of simply talking about freemen, the text spoke of
‘freemen of the Cantwara’, the code would show some similarity to Ripuarian
Law, which likewise uses a ‘regional’ ethnic signifier for its subjects.[14]It could be that the local Roman population
had – again as in Lex Ribvaria – either
adopted the general identity of the free population or sunk into the semi-free
classes and so required no separate legislation.The only indication that this might be the
case is the appearance of the term laet,
from the Latin laetus, to denote an
evidently half-free category.[15]Quite how or why laeti (originally barbarians captured in war and settled inside the
Empire) would come to refer to people of provincial Roman origin is difficult to imagine, however.

[4] A letter from Gogo, the nutritor
of Childebert II, to Bishop Petrus of Metz (c.580) provides an interesting snapshot of local ecclesiastical
personnel, listing seven office-holders among the latter’s circle.Four have Germanic names; three have
Roman.This might indicate the shift
towards Germanic names already under way.One may be a civic official, however.Theodemund is described as civium
praesidium, which is especially interesting as the description is a literal
translation of his name.However one
reads it, this suggests some knowledge of Germanic language in the Moselle
valley.Either Gogo was punning on
Theodemund’s name, or Theodemund took a name that described his position. Ep.Aust. 22.

[5] Gregory of Tours’ maternal great-uncle, Gundulf, who had been one
of the domestici at the Austrasian
court, is perhaps the best-known example.The penetration of the fashion for non-Roman names more generally into
southern Gaulish society is visible in Gregory’s works during the 570s-90s.

[6] Halsall, Warfare and Society
in the Barbarian West 450-900 (London, 2003), pp.

[7] Seen classically in Gregory of Tours’ dealings with Leudast, the
count of Tours.Leudast, said Gregory,
was a low-born Poitevin but had risen in the service of the Frankish kings and
had been given, or had adopted, a Frankish name.

[8] This statement was one of the admittedly slender bases for
Eckhardt’s identification of different recensions of Salic Law associated with
these rulers in the manuscripts of the PLS.

[13] I have used this admittedly problematic term to denote an ethnic
identity which relates to a ‘people’, like the Franks, the Alamans or the
Bavarians.

[14] As I have argued elsewhere (Barbarian
Migrations), and intimated above, it is analytically mistaken to assume
that what might look like regionally- or geographically-based signifiers are
less ‘ethnic’ than those that derive from the names of ‘peoples’ – not least because
the former can become the latter, as in the case of the Cantwara.

[15] This is one of the few points of similarity between Æthelberht’s Code
and the Pactus Legis Salicae, and the
latter’s half-free class of liti.That the laets
might have been Romano-British has been suggested by several authorities, such
as Whitelock.

Friday, 16 October 2015

["Not talkin' 'bout the roots in the name/ talkin' 'bout the roots in the man', sang Lamont Dozier (and, later and more famously, Odyssey). When I started working on the 'Transformations of the Year 600', I thought that there would be little or nothing to say about ethnicity, unlike in its predecessor, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, where it is an important element of the analysis. This was because I accepted the view, which seems general, that that was, if not 'the' period of ethnogenesis, certainly a period when ethnic identity was very important in political transformation. Now I am wondering whether this was in fact the case. Thinking about the nature of post-imperial polities either side of 600, and the processes of subjectification, made me reconsider this. Here are my current, very preliminary thoughts on this issue. These, clearly, deal only with the Frankish kingdom. Whether things might be different in the Visigothic, Lombard or Anglo-Saxon realms remains to be seen.]

***

‘It wearies me to
record the diverse civil wars that beset the people and kingdom of the Franks [francorum gentem et regnum]...’[1]

One of the biggest areas of
research in early medieval history in recent decades has been the study of
ethnicity and its role in the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire.Indeed Walter Goffart, an outspoken opponent
of the ‘ethnogenesis’ approach, begins one book with a statement that the Roman
Empire ran into a ‘wave of ethnicity’ in Late Antiquity.[2]The often vitriolic debate has overwhelmingly
concerned the period between the late fourth and the sixth centuries, that of
the ‘fall of the Roman Empire’; the period covered by the present book has
featured very much less prominently except, perhaps, in discussions of the
Lombards and Avars.In this chapter,
however, I will suggest that in fact it was precisely in the decades around 600
that ethnic identity really came to the fore as a politically significant
factor.

I have offered a fairly full
discussion of the nature of ethnicity before[3]
but it will be helpful to offer a résumé of the conclusions reached there.
There is no single feature that can be used to define an ethnicity, other than
the belief in one’s membership of a group and in the distinctiveness of that
group.Ethnicity is subjective,
multi-layered (one can have more than one level of identity that functions in
an ‘ethnic’ way), performative (ethnic identity is not immanent but is
activated by performance), situational (it, or certain levels of an actor’s
ethnicity, is performed in certain situations) and dynamic (what an ethnic
identity means, or the effects achieved in its performance, change through
time). The principal means by which I would modify this view today would be in
which the identity being performed is seen.In the 2007 book there is insufficient theorisation of what is meant by
an ‘identity’, although this flaw is very common across the innumerable studies
of identity in early medieval history.[4]It seems too strongly implied that the identity,
however mutable, is some sort of self-present entity or at least a set of unproblematically, mutually-understood
roles and images.The point to be
stressed though is that any identity is a mental image of an ideal, comprised
not only of what the social actor sees as its advantages and disadvantages but
also what they perceive to be others’ expectations of the correct performance
of the identity.That mental image will
of course constantly be changing as a result of the myriad ongoing performances
of social interactions between people of particular identities.The mental ideal image associated with the
identity can, furthermore, never be attained but is always striven towards.There is also no guarantee that that image,
as perceived by one actor, will correspond exactly to that imagined by other
parties in the interaction.That gives
the decision to perform a particular identity in a social interaction some of
the characteristics of a wager rather than something of which the outcome can
be entirely predicted in terms of the relative prestige or privilege associated
with particular identities.

In the fifth and early sixth
centuries it can be argued that ethnic identity was particularly fluid and
multi-layered.This should not be
assumed to mean that one could pick and choose identities at will.The ethnic shifts that can be observed are
best explained in terms of the acquisition, and reordering through time, of new
identities within the ethnic field.Thus
a provincial Roman (and one must remember that ‘Roman’ identity was itself
multi-layered, with regional and various civitas
identities beneath the general ’Roman’ heading) might acquire a new,
‘barbarian’ ethnicity, such as Goth or Frank, related to various activities or
functions within the realm.Over time
that identity might come to be stressed more than the others, until it was his
primary means of identification.There
can be no doubt that politics in this period could be seen as the interaction
of ethnic identities.

That said, however, ethnicities
at that time appear very often to have been functional.Famously, for example, barbarian ethnic
identities were associated with the military, across the west, while the
‘Roman’ identity was linked more heavily to educational culture, to civic administrative
roles, to the Church, and so on.The
implication of this is that ethnicity remained ‘nested’ within and authorised
by a particular conception of the Roman or post-imperial state.What shaped the social role of, for example,
Gothic identity was the perception of the military function of the Goths.This can be seen very clearly in the writings
of Cassiodorus and the ‘civilitas’ ideology to which he gave voice.Goths defended the realm, allowing Romans to
maintain their traditional civilised way of life, which included serving in the
administrative offices of the kingdom.The two identities were largely defined by their interrelationship
within that structure and any power associated with them was ultimately
legitimated by a link to the king.In
many regards, this simply continued the late Roman distinction between the
civil and military arms of imperial service.None of this denies that the relationship between such ethnic identities
was dynamic and that the relative standing of each was subject to change.This was one factor that led to particular
social actors adopting other identities.

Andrew Gillett has argued that
ethnicity was not politicised in the immediately post-imperial period.[5]This immediately, of course, begs the
question of what is meant by ‘politicised’.Gillett appears to take the political to mean the level of political
units and their leaders, which is too restrictive an interpretation.Clearly, within any kingdom the interplay of
ethnic identities was political.Nonetheless,
at that high level of politics, his argument is forceful.Terms that associated royal titles or realms
with people, like those that appear in the epigram from Gregory of Tours with
which this chapter opened, do seem to be rare before the late sixth century.The preceding discussion perhaps suggests why
this was.The realm itself was not
associated with a single dominant ethnicity or ethnic group and the ruler was
the ruler of all groups within a territory.As we have just seen, it was the overarching structure of the territory
or state and its government and ruler that legitimised, and created a frame
for, the performance of ethnic identities.

The place of ethnic identity in
society and politics may, however, have changed in the later sixth century.Two documentary references might give us a
way into examining this.The first comes
in Fredegar’s Chronicle (IV.78),
describing a punitive campaign launched in 636/7 by the Franks against the
Basques.King Dagobert sent an army led
by ten dukes: ‘Arinbert, Amalgar, Leudebert, Wandalmar, Wandelbert, Ermen,
Barontus, Chairard ex genere francorum,
Chramnelen ex genere romano [sic], Willibad the patrician genere burgundionum, Aighyna genere saxsonum [sic]’ and many other counts.

The second comes from Ripuarian
Law.Lex
Ribvaria’s date is difficult to establish with any precision; it lacks an
identifying prologue and the manuscripts, as is so often the case, are later
than its presumed date of issue.Nonetheless, the communis opinio,
based on cross-reference from the prologues to the late Alamannic and Bavarian
codes, seems to be that it was issued in the reign of Dagobert.Whether the promulgation of the law would
date to the beginning of his sole rule (629) or, as I have proposed before,
associated with the council of Clichy (626) and the defusing of tensions
between Dagobert and his father, is uncertain.We might nevertheless accept an early seventh-century date.The law might then belong to more or less the
same time as the Basque campaign described by Fredegar.Clause 40 of the law sets out the penalties
to be paid if a Ripuarian Frank kills another freeman of varying ethnic
identities: Frank, Burgundian, Roman, Alaman, Frisian, Bavarian and Saxon are
listed.More significantly for the
development and historiography of early medieval law, clause 35 says that
someone of Ripuarian, Frankish, Burgundian, Alamannic ‘or whatever other’
origin can be tried by the law of the place (or of the people into which) they
were born.This is the first reference
to the much discussed ‘personality of the law’ in the Merovingian world.

The two texts appear to suggest
that different ethnic identities were important within the ‘kingdom of the
Franks’. The analysis, however, may
require us to look at the two levels of kingship within the Merovingian world:
the regional Teilreiche and the
broader regnum francorum made up of
all of the different kingdoms and occasionally unified under a single ruler
(such as Chlothar I at the very start of our period or his grandson Chlothar II
between 613 and 621). If we start with the lower of these two levels,
represented by Ripuarian Law, it is difficult to imagine any ordinary freeman
making effective a claim to a non-Ripuarian Frankish identity and thus to be
tried by the law of his own people in a typical Frankish rural mallus or court.The title guaranteeing the right to be tried
by one’s own law seems more plausibly to be aimed at the higher ranks of
society.Within the Austrasian Teilreich, then, an aristocrat could
effectively employ an ethnic identity from outside the kingdom.

This is underlined by Fredegar’s
account, which shows that when the aristocracy of the different Teilreiche came together within the
aristocracy in the politics of the broader Frankish kingdom, their different ethnicities
were noted.The context of Fredegar’s
description, moreover, makes it clear that aristocrats of all of these
different identities (including Roman) were involved in leading the army.[6]Simple administrative function within the realm’s
governmental structures, then, does not explain ethnic difference, as had been
the case in the sixth century.Fredegar’s Chronicle regularly
notes which of the various Frankish Teilreiche
a particular nobleman came from.Fredegar particularly mentions those from Burgundy, evidently his own
region, for whom he occasionally uses the term Burgundaefarones (loosely: the clans of the Burgundians).These features are generally absent from the
writings of Gregory of Tours, who commonly identifies the actors in his account
by the civitas of origin or simply
qualifies them as a Frank.While the
Frankish label is clearly ethnic, it can also function, for Gregory, as a
description of the highest political levels of the realm. On the other hand, an
identity focused on a city-district is more than a geographical denomination;[7]
it is a form, or level, of ethnicity.What seems different in Fredegar’s vocabulary is the increasing stress
laid upon broader identities within the ‘kingdom of the Franks’.

However, while this does seem, as
mentioned, to be a largely aristocratic phenomenon on the texts, that may be
because of the greater ability of the more powerful strata of society to move
within the realm and come into contact with each other.Returning to the level of the regional Teilreiche it may be that the free
population came to share the same regional identity.Ripuarian
Law uses the term francus to mean
a Frank from outside the region.Sometimes it employs romanus
to mean an outsider as well.[8]The standard member of the free population
(man or woman) is called a Ripuarian.It
may be significant that this regional label is used, rather than a more
obviously ‘ethnic’ term or qualifier like ‘Frank’ (or Ripuarian Frank).That would fit with the use of identities
based upon regional kingdom used in Fredegar’s Chronicle.When discussing
society from within the territory of the Ripuarians, however, the ‘Romans’ are
no longer an element of the free population, divided into grades roughly
equivalent to those of the Franks, as in Pactus
Legis Salicae. Instead, they have
slipped down the scale to being a semi-free social category, needing Ripuarians
to speak for them at law.One exception
to this rule may have lain in the region of Trier, where some of the local population
clung on to a Roman identity.According
to his biographer, Saint Gaugeric (later Bishop of Cambrai) was born in the
late sixth century into a family of ‘Romans’ of the middling sort.In the seventh century, another holy man from
the same civitas, Saint Germanus of
Grandval, was born into a family of ‘senators’.It may, however, be suggestive that Germanus’ familial identity was
based upon senatorial rank rather than a Roman ethnicity.Perhaps even here the cachet of Roman
identity had been seriously weakened.An
increasing stress on rank rather than ethnicity would tie in with other
developments.

The ethnic structure of the
Frankish kingdoms seems, therefore, subtly but importantly different in the
seventh century.Regional, ‘kingdom’
ethnicities appear to be important and, within those regions, the free
population appears to share that identity.Furthermore, whereas ethnic identity in the sixth-century Merovingian
realm had largely related to function within the realm and could thus be
brought together in the kingdom itself, there is no such mechanism that
similarly ties Neustrians to Austrasians, to Burgundians within the overarching
structure of the regnum francorum.These look more like regional factions or
interest-groups within the ‘kingdom of the Franks’, a feature that seems to be
underlined by repeated Austrasian demands to have a king located within their
region.Even the other Teilreich, however, remained divided into
Burgundians and Neustrians.In its
broader sense, the seventh-century kingdom seems, in a very real sense, to be
significantly more ‘polyethnic’ than its sixth-century predecessor.

[4]
Most significantly and ironically, there is, as far as I can see, no sufficient examination or
theorisation of what an identity is in the volume Texts and Identities in the Early Middle Ages, ed. R. Corradini, R.
Meens, C. Pösel & P. Shaw (Vienna, 2006).